Should I invest in Mutual funds or Stocks in a Roth IRA ?

[StockTrader6080]

It is depend on your risk tolerance. Aggressive investor , moderate or conservative. But you seen like an aggressive investor.
Invest both if you have enough capital. Remember, never put all eggs into one bracket.

Dumping money into mutual funds to me is HIGH RISK. You are counting on someone to manage that fund and for all you know the fund manager could be asleep at the wheel. He could be in the Bahamas enjoying the sun!

Many mutual funds dropped 50% last year. That's INSANE!

Keith

Goodbye mutual funds. Hello cooltrade robotic traders.

[Broken Arrow]

As an index fund fan who also trades stocks, I do have to say there are good fund managers out there who are indeed reliable and are good at what they do.

To me, the real question is whether they can provide enough of a performance boost relative to their cost to give us investors any real net benefit for investing with them in the first place.

However, to invest in mutual funds in itself isn't inherently a high risk exercise. Unless you are really unlucky and you do end up with the likes of Madoff steering your ship. But then, I contend that even when you are investing passively, it's also the responsibility of we the investors to have some understanding of what we're investing into and why. I'm not trying to shift the finger-pointing or anything but...

Finally, I have my (strong) doubts if we ourselves can consistently trade as well as professional fund managers. Maybe so, maybe not. That's partly why I trade too, because I want to see for myself if that's possible. But again, I have my doubts.

[StockTrader6080]

As an index fund fan who also trades stocks, I do have to say there are good fund managers out there who are indeed reliable and are good at what they do.

To me, the real question is whether they can provide enough of a performance boost relative to their cost to give us investors any real net benefit for investing with them in the first place.

However, to invest in mutual funds in itself isn't inherently a high risk exercise. Unless you are really unlucky and you do end up with the likes of Madoff steering your ship. But then, I contend that even when you are investing passively, it's also the responsibility of we the investors to have some understanding of what we're investing into and why. I'm not trying to shift the finger-pointing or anything but...

Finally, I have my (strong) doubts if we ourselves can consistently trade as well as professional fund managers. Maybe so, maybe not. That's partly why I trade too, because I want to see for myself if that's possible. But again, I have my doubts.

I agree. I would not call them all crooks. I just don't think a mutual fund can sell all of their positions and go to 100% cash when things go bad. I'm not even sure they can short stocks. These are things that I can do at the drop of a hat when I am managing my own money.

Also the institutions are having a fieldday with their computers against the public, so I don't know why it should be a surprise that we can do it too. There's no way I could manually compete against my robotic traders as they can see and track more positions and rules every second than I ever could.

To see some of what the institutions are doing with their computers to compete with us, go to the cooltrade website and look at the article on the far right list called PROTECT YOURSELF.

Keith

[mtsen]

mutual fund requires you to know a little bit, stocks would need to know much more. Make your decision depends on how much you know about investment.

eventually all personal finance tools evolve around stock market, whether directly or indirectly. As it 'represents' a country's economy ...